Los Angeles daily herald., 1887-09-04
DAILY HERALD.
WOMAN's OPPORTUNITY.
Home the Great Field of Her Use
fulness.

fulmesSs
The HAMPToNs, August %. =
Woman's Opportunity was the sub
iect of discourse by the Rev. I. De
Witt Talmage, D. D., to-day, and his
text: $50 God created man in His
own image, the image OF God created
He him: male and female created He
them." Genesis i, 27. Following is
the sermon in ull:
In other words, God, who can make
no mistake, made man and woman for
: specific work, and to move in partic-
ular spheres-man to be regnant in
his realm; woman to be dominant
in hers. The boundary line
between Italy and Switzerland
between England and Scotland,
is not more thoroughly marked
than this distinction between
the empire masculine and the empire
feminine. So entirely dissimilar
are the fields to which God called
them, that you can no more compare
them than you can oxygen and hydro
gen, water and grass, trees and stars.
All this talk about the superiority OF
one sex to the other sex is an ever
lasting waste of ink and speech. A
ieweler may have a scale so delicate
that he can weigh the dust OF dia-
monds; but where are the scales SO
delicate that you can weigh in them
affection against affection, sentiment
against sentiment, thought against
thought, soul against soul, a
mans world against woman's
world? You come out with
your stereotyped remark, the man
is superior to woman in intellect, and
then 1 open on my desk the swarthy,
iron-typed, thunderbolted writings of
Harriet Martineau, and Elizabeth
Browning and George Eliot. You
come on with your sterotyped remark
about woman's superiority to man in
the item of affection; but l ask you
where was there more capacity to love
than in John the disciple, and Robert
McCheyne the Scotchnan, and John
Summerfieldthe Methodist, and Henry
Martin the missionary? The heart of
those men was so large that after you
had rolled into it two Hemispheres
there was room still left to marshal the
hosts OF heaven and set up the throne
of the Eternal Jehovah.
DENY TO MAN
The throne intellectual. l deny to
woman the throne affectional. No
human phraseology will ever define
the spheres, while there is an intuition
by which we know when a man is in
his realm, and when a woman is in her
realm, and when either of them is out
of it. No bungling Legislature ought
to attempt to make definition, or to
say: "This is the line and that is the
line." My theory is that if a woman
wants to vote, she ought to vote, and
If man wants to embroider and keeI
house, he out to be allowed to embrio
der and keep house. There are mas
cnline women and effeminate men,
My theory is that you have no right tc
interfere with any ones doing
anything that is righteous. Al
bany and Washington might
as well decree by legislation how high
a brown -thrasher should fly, or how
deep trout should plunge, as to try
to seek the height or depth of wom-
ans duty. The question of capacity
will settle finally the whole question,
the whole subject. When a woman is
prepared to preach, she will preach,
and neither Conference or Presbytery
can hinder her. When a woman is
fprepared to move in higher CONNER
.cial spheres, she will have great in
Auence on the Exchange, and nc
boards of trade can hinder her.
want woman to understand that heart
and brain can overly any barrier that
politicians may set up and that moth
ing can keep her back or keep her
down but the question of incapacity.
There are women, l know, of most
undesirable nature who wander up
and down the country, having nc
homes of their own, or forsaking their
own nhomes-talking about their rights,
and we know very well that they
themselves are fit neither to vote nor
fit to keep house. Their mission
seems to be to humiliate the two sexes
at the thought of what any one of us
might become. No one would want
to live under the laws that such wom-
en- would enact, or to have cast upon
society the children that such womer
would raise. But l shall show yor
this morning that the
BEST RIGHTS THAT WOMEN CAN owr
She already has in her possession
that her position in this country a
this time is not one of commiseration
but one of congratulltion; that the
grandeur and power of her realm have
never yet been appreciated; that she
sits to-day on throne so high, that
all the thrones of earth piled on top o
each other would not make for her {
footstool. Here is the platform OF
which she stands. Away down below
it are the ballot box and the Congress
sional assemblage and the Legislative
hall. Woman always has voted
and always will vote. Oul
great-grandfathers thought they were
by their votes putting Washing
ton into the Presidential chair. No
His mother, by the principles she
taught him, and by the habits she in
culcated, made him President. II
was Christian mothers hand drop
ping the ballot when Lord Bacon
wrote and Newton philosophical, and
Alfred the Great governed, and Jona-
than Edwards thundered of judgment
to come. How many men there have
been in high political station, who
would have been insufficient to stand
the test to which their moral principle
was put, had it not been for wife, s
voice that encouraged them to do
right, and wife's prayer that sound
ed louder than the clamor of partizan-
ship! Why, my friends, the
right of suffrage, as we men ex-
ercise it, seems to be a feeble
thing. You, a Christian man, come
up to the ballot-box and you drop voul
vote. Right after you comes a liber
tine, or sot-the offscouring OF the
. treet-and he drops bis vote; and hi
vote counteracts yours. But if in the
quiet of home-life daughter by hel
Christian demeanor, a wife by her in
dustry, mother by her faithfulness
casts vote in the right direction
. IL 80 =.